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Wednesday, May 18, 2016

American Exceptionalism: Are Donald and Hillary the Exceptions?

Sorry for disappearing these many days. For a believer in American exceptionalism, Donald and Hillary have me in a deep funk. The former doesn't know when he is lying. The latter knows she's lying, but can't help herself.

"Whatever the endgame produces, it’s useful to focus on the process of negotiation itself, which is nearly as important as whether there’s a sustainable deal.

First, there is the fact of U.S.-Iranian engagement. For more than 18 months, Iran has been in direct talks with a power it once demonized as the 'Great Satan.' Iranian hard-liners certainly remain, but the nation that chanted in unison 'Death to America' is probably gone forever."

When I sent emails to Ignatius and provided evidence that he was wrong, he wrote back to me and declared:

"You miss my point entirely. What I said was that the NATION will never again chant it in UNISON. There will still be fanatical hardliners but they are beginning to be outliers."

In the wake of Ben Rhodes revelations concerning the Iran nuclear deal that the Obama administration had "played" America's journalists, I sent an email to Ignatius earlier this week:

"I think it is time to revisit our correspondence from one year ago, particularly in light of Ben Rhodes recent comments to The New York Times Magazine, i.e. the distinction between 'hardliners' (Khamenei) and 'moderates' (Rouhani) was concocted by the administration to sell the nuclear deal.

In any event, "Death to America" chanting has continued and will continue.

Do you feel that you were influenced by Rhodes and friends? I think a follow-up opinion piece might be interesting."

"One basic test of a politician’s honesty is whether that person tells the truth when on the campaign trail, and by that standard Clinton does well. PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking site, calculates that of the Clinton statements it has examined, 50 percent are either true or mostly true.

That compares to 49 percent for Bernie Sanders’s, 9 percent for Trump’s, 22 percent for Ted Cruz’s and 52 percent for John Kasich’s. Here we have a rare metric of integrity among candidates, and it suggests that contrary to popular impressions, Clinton is relatively honest — by politician standards."

Ah yes, "politician standards." How reassuring that half of what Hillary tells us is true or mostly true! But more to the point, I wonder what Kristof has to say of the 13-minute YouTube highlighting Hillary's incessant deceit, which, as noted by WaPo's Kathleen Parker, has gone viral.